


Thicker Than Water

by CaramelShadows



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Amnesia, Brainwashing, Gen, Physical Transformation, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-23 04:58:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11982645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaramelShadows/pseuds/CaramelShadows
Summary: "I always wanted a daughter," Narcissa says, smiling, smiling, smiling. "And since you have deprived me of my son, I find it only fit that you will replace him."





	Thicker Than Water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HereInLies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereInLies/gifts).



> I loved your prompts so much! I hope I've done some kind of justice to them, they were really inspiring.

"I always wanted a daughter," Narcissa says, smiling, smiling, smiling. "And since you have deprived me of my son, I find it only fit that you will replace him."

Hermione can’t speak through the petrification she was hit with, but if she could, she’s not sure whether she would hit the woman or simply scream. Something about the look on Narcissa’s face speaks of predators, makes all the most visceral parts of her overwhelm her rational mind with terror.

Narcissa takes her arm, and there’s the jerk of a portkey, and a swirl of colors, and the street around her disappears.

When the world settles again, it’s in a bare stone room with runes on every surface. The ones straight in front of her look carved and immutable, but in the corners of her vision they appear to crawl over the walls, moving like something alive. 

Narcissa is ignoring her now, bustling around and picking up things from a table in the corner. The lack of attention is almost more frightening than her attention had been. She ladles something out of a cauldron and into a silver goblet. Hermione can see the surface of the potion seething like the ocean in a storm, moving with no visible impetus, and the blood-red liquid is giving off fumes like a mirage.

Narcissa dismisses the petrification, which Hermione had given up fighting against in her distraction, and before she can organize her limbs in the sudden freedom to reach for her wand or run, Narcissa has incanted _imperio_ with a cold smile, and there is no reason to struggle.

Hermione reaches out to take the goblet and brings it to her lips. She can’t take her eyes away from the surface, from the iridescent glints of color that flicker in and out of sight on the surface. She can hear Narcissa speaking, but the words don’t seem important. Hermione can almost see through the potion, to a garden with two figures sitting in it- but before she can being the image into focus, the liquid has disappeared between her lips. It burns her tongue, and runs down her throat like ice, and roils in her stomach like something alive. 

Her skin seems suddenly afire, and the goblet falls from her numb fingers. The world goes black, and she does not hear it hit the ground.

  


When Hermione wakes up, she is in an unfamiliar bedroom. It has soft pink walls with rose gold accents ornately encrusted across them. The bed she is in is soft and deep, with a thick blanket that feels and looks like a cloud. Mauve damask curtains are tied back to the posts of the huge bed, and when she manages to extract herself from the depths of the mattress, she finds that there are steps down from the bed to the floor.

She also finds that she is wearing a nightgown of ivory silk with delicate lace around the neck and hems, and her bag and wand are as absent as her own clothing.

She gathers her magic around her with a furious twist of will and tries to force an apparition - she hadn’t quite mastered wandless apparition yet, but she would rather be splinched than trapped in what she assumes is Malfoy Manor.

Nothing happens.

The panic she has been refusing to acknowledge prickles around the edges of her thoughts, and she runs through every spell she has ever cast wandless - and many she hasn’t - with increasing desperation, from an attempted messenger patronus all the way down to a simple _lumos_ with tears prickling at her eyes. Each is as ineffective as the last, and she gives way to panic and collapses to her knees, breaking down into sobs and burying her face in her hands. Hermione has always been able to rely on her magic, ever since she found out she was a witch. Now she is in enemy territory, alone, with nothing, and she cannot even light a room.

She cries until her eyes burn and her nose runs and she gives herself a headache. The room remains silent except for the sounds that she makes, a soft emptiness that swallows any noise without an echo. When she sniffles her way back out of her panic, she decides to see if there’s a bathroom attached to this bedroom that she can wash her face in, since she seems to be left alone here. There’s no reason to remain uncomfortable.

She stands and makes her way over to the first door she sees, which, upon opening, proves to lead into a dressing room with racks of beautiful robes in soft, feminine colors. She leaves it open, just so she’ll feel a little less trapped in this one room.

The next door leads to a sitting room filled with low, elegant furniture that probably cost more than Hermione’s entire flat, and she leaves it open as well.

The third door, finally, leads to a bathroom. By this time her bladder has made itself known, and she finds and uses a toilet before making her way over to the sink and washing her hands and splashing cold water on her face, carefully loosening the crust of tears from around her eyes and cooling her skin until she feels a little more like herself. She turns off the water with her eyes closed, grabbing a hand towel that she had noted the position of before she stuck her face in the water, and stands up straight, blotting her face dry.

Hermione lowers the towel and opens her eyes to see a stranger staring back at her. She yelps and jumps back, and it is only when the girl before her echoes her movements that she realizes that she’s standing in front of a mirror.

She drops the towel and feels frantically at her face, tracing the sharp and unfamiliar nose, the defined cheekbones, the delicate jawline. The stranger in the mirror follows every movement, with a look of panic on her face that seems somehow more refined than Hermione can imagine any expression ever looking on her own features. 

Her hair is hanging loose and smooth down her back, pale blonde and straight without even the faintest hint of curl. She looks… well. She looks like she could be Draco’s sister. And that’s what Narcissa said, wasn’t it? That Hermione was going to replace Draco. So Narcissa must have done something to make her _look_ like she could be a Malfoy daughter.

Hermione looks at her reflection for a long moment, then draws back her fist and punches it in its delicate Malfoy nose.

The mirror shatters and shards rain down onto her fist, opening several cuts, but the reflection isn’t there anymore. She notes absently that the mirror was backed with rose gold instead of silver, so she’s probably even paler than she looked with it giving her a glow of health.

She extracts her hand from the glass and carefully rinses out the cuts in the sink. It would be a moment’s work to heal them if she had her wand, and she thinks she could probably even manage without it if her magic worked - but she isn’t thinking about that. Instead of healing it, then, she takes a quietly vindictive pleasure in tearing the lace off of the silk nightgown and ripping the skirt into neat strips that she then uses to bandage her hand. There’s no sense in bleeding out or getting it infected. Not yet, anyway.

She looks down at the remains of the nightgown and decides to find something else to wear, even if it’s a delicate feminine robe. The nightgown wasn’t much before, but now it’s rather less.

She walks purposefully into the dressing room. Nothing in there looked even slightly like something she’d ever wear, but needs must, and she’s starting to feel chilled in the shredded silk nightgown. Surely she’ll feel more able to face whatever is coming if she can do it with shoes on, and hopefully a bra. Some witches use charms for that, she knows, but since she cannot cast anything right now - she clamps down on her terror at the thought - she wants _something_ to cover and hold herself up with. She wants to armor herself against whatever is to come, and she will do it with whatever is available. 

She is not a vulnerable waif, however much she might look like one in this nightgown. She is Hermione Granger, and she is going to find her way out of this. She helped win the war. She tied for the most NEWTs in the history of Hogwarts. She straightens her spine at the reminder. She has been trapped in enemy territory and made it out before. She’ll do it again.

And surely someone is looking for her, too. Even if she only slept one night’s worth - she hasn’t found a window yet to see what kind of day it is - she was due at the Weasleys’ for lunch on Sunday, and it was Saturday morning when she was taken. They’ll miss her soon. Harry will be looking for her, and Ron, and everyone. They’ll find her.

They have to find her.

She carefully locks her fear and panic in a corner of her mind and starts going through the robes. They’re all soft, pale colors, the kind of fabric choices that a Regency belle would covet, though not the cuts. She pulled out a pale blue gown that shimmered lavender in the light and made a face. She’d look like an impressionist painting.

Honestly, all of these things will wash her out now that she is blonde and pale. She questions the taste of whoever stocked the closet, if they knew she would be using it looking like this.

Focusing on the banalities had always been her bulwark against panic. In school, she had color coded study schedules for all of her friends - schedules she knew they'd never use - and here she apparently has… clothing. She glares at the blush pink sleeve of a particularly frilly robe as if it has done her a personal injury. She had always considered herself above caring about such silly things as fashion, but clothing herself seems to be the only thing she can affect here. 

Hermione sets her jaw and starts digging through the robes, sorting them into a gradient of most to least impractical. 

When she finishes, she looks at the left side of the rack. The two least impractical robes are a simple shift in a silvery grey that she discards mentally for being too Slytherin. That leaves only one, a structured fawn gown that reminds her vaguely of The Sound Of Music. She sighs and pulls it out, then starts looking through the drawers for underthings. 

To her disproportionate delight, which she quickly throttles as unhelpful, she finds a pair of straight legged bloomers. They are covered in a truly obscene amount of cobweb-fine lace, but she solves that problem by the simple expedient of ripping it all off. The harsh tearing sounds are loud against the pillowy silence of the room, and almost startling enough to make her jump. 

In another drawer, she finds something that looks like a cross between a bra and a corset, and eyes it dubiously before deciding that she’ll probably feel less naked with it on. Outfit assembled, she dresses, completing it with a pair of absurdly frilly socks from another drawer. Most of the shoes are soft slippers or impractical heels - though they do all seem to be spelled for durability and stability. In a corner she finds a pair of bizarrely familiar mary janes, all shiny black leather and thick soles.

She spends her time dressing carefully avoiding looking at the walls, which intersperse clothing racks with floor to ceiling panels of mirror. She doesn’t need another shock like that first sight in the bathroom.

She almost wishes she had a curling iron, to try and turn this bizarre hair into something that felt familiar, or scissors to cut it all off and pretend it hadn’t happened, but all she can do it ignore it and ignore the pallor of her hands and the pale flickers in the mirrors in the corners of her eyes.

  


  


  


  


Hermione storms down the stairs, trying to feel like a vengeful force of nature rather than a delicate waif. She’s hunting for her ‘host’. After looking into several rooms at random, she hits the jackpot with a room decorated in powder blue and silver. Before she can speak, Narcissa notices her.

“Cassi, darling, you're up!” Narcisa rises gracefully to her feet from the small table where she was seated. “I told the elves not to let you out while you were ill! Are you feeling so much better, sweetheart?”

“What the fuck did you do to me, Narcissa,” Hermione snaps, holding up a lock of her limp blonde hair.

“Oh, no, are you having another one of your fits, Cassi?” Narcissa makes an elegant moue that might have been a grimace in another woman. “Who are you this time?”

“Who the hell is Cassi? I'm Hermione Granger, and you kidnapped me!” Hermione glares daggers at Narcissa. She doesn’t know what’s going on, but she’s not letting go of her anger. It’s all that’s keeping her going.

“Oh dear, it's a bad one.” Narcissa sighs and claps her hands. “Tirry!”

A house elf appears next to the table. “Yes, Mistress Narcissa?”

“Mistress Cassiopeia is having one of her fits. Please fetch her potion and have Milly check her room for books. I think she's found one of those trashy popular histories about the War. None of you are to take her orders without confirmation from me until she’s feeling herself again.”

Hermione stares at her. She isn't sure what she expected when she confronted Narcissa, but this isn't it. Adding to her confusion, Narcissa stands and gently takes her arm to lead her to the table. Hermione jerks back. “Don't touch me!”

Narcissa drops her hand with a deeply wounded expression. “Cassi, darling, it’s mummy. Surely you remember me.”

“I remember you kidnapping me, Narcissa,” Hermione snarls. “You’re not my mother. Her name is Jean and she's a dentist.” She pauses, fighting back guilt at the thought of Australian Monica Wilkins. She hasn't had the time to go and fetch her parents yet. So many death eaters have still been at large since the end of the war, it isn't safe. And people like Narcissa Malfoy walk free, guilty only of association. Narcissa made a tearful plea to the Wizengamot (frequently mentioning the death of her only son), and a large donation to the rebuilding efforts, and she is a society darling again, reputation only a little tarnished by her husband in Azkaban. 

Hermione’s thoughts are at this point interrupted by the appearance of Tirry, holding a silvery bottle of some unknown potion. Hermione turns and bolts for the door, weaving to try and avoid another imperius. She doesn’t want to know what that one will do to her, not after the first one. 

Narcissa sighs behind her, an absurdly delicate sound. “It's one of her bad days. Tirry, spell it into her.”

With a sinking feeling, Hermione hears the house elf snap its fingers, and then feels a sudden rush of coolness in her stomach. She grits her teeth and keeps going through the hallway, ignoring the walls as they start to wobble and close in and everything goes increasingly fuzzy, until she trips over the edge of a carpet and lands in a befuddled heap on the floor. 

She can't remember why she was running. She is - she is - what?

 _Are you a witch or not?_ echoes the back of her mind. Her hand clenches around something that isn't there and she looks down at her empty palm. If she is a witch, where is her wand? 

Never mind wands, where is _she_?

... _Who_ is she?

Something appears next to her and she rears back in shock before realizing it’s only a house elf. She is suddenly seized with the conviction that she needs to give it clothes, that this is what she does with house elves. She scrabbles at her person for a few moments, looking for something she can take off, and eventually triumphantly produces a sock. 

She holds it out to the house elf. “Clothes!” She beams, feeling that she has done something right.

The house elf bursts into tears. “Tirry knows that Mistress Cassiopeia is not herself, and Mistress Narcissa said not to listen to her, but has Tirry been so bad that Mistress Cassiopeia wishes to be rid of him?”

She pulls back the sock, shaking her head. “No, clothes are good! I remember!”

Tirry weeps all the harder. 

A beautiful woman steps up behind him and holds her hand out. “Did you fall, Cassi, darling?”

She blinks. “Cassi? Is that who I am?”

“Yes, sweetheart. You’re Cassi, and I’m your mummy.”

Cassi blinks up at her. “Mummy?” For a moment she thinks she sees tangled brown curls and amber eyes, but she blinks, and it’s grey eyes and pale blonde hair again. She reaches up and takes her mummy’s hand.

Mummy goes to help her up, but pauses and clucks her tongue disapprovingly. She turns over Cassi’s hand to look at the palm. It’s red and angry looking, a nasty rugburn. “We can’t let you stay hurting, can we darling?” She pulls out her wand and taps it on Cassi’s hand with a murmur, and the redness retreats, leaving smooth, pale skin.

Cassi’s eyes lock on the wand. “Mummy, I’m a witch, aren’t I? Where’s my wand?” 

“Of course you’re a witch, Cassi. You broke your old wand during one of your fits. I’m going to take you to Gregorovitch to get a new one when you’re well again, remember?”

Something niggles at the back of her mind. “Aren’t wands from… Ollimander?”

“Mr. Ollivander will no longer serve our family, I’m afraid,” Mummy says with a lightness that seems forced. “After the war - well, nevermind the war, that’s what got us into all of this trouble, isn’t it, darling? Did you find a book about it?”

Cassi blinks at her. “I don’t remember. Mummy, I don’t remember _anything_.”

Mummy sighs and gently cups her face with a hand. Cassi closes her eyes and leans into the comforting touch. “I’m sorry, darling, sometimes the potions take you like this. There’s a healer coming next week to see if there’s anything better we can do for your fits.”

Cassi nods. That sounds reasonable.

“Now, darling, come along with mummy and eat breakfast in the morning room with me, and then we’ll get you back to bed and see if you feel more yourself after a nap. All right, sweetheart?”

Cassi smiles up at her mummy. She’s so considerate. “Of course, mummy.”


End file.
